Archives for Capitol Hillbillies

Congressional leaders are girded to push a Christmas compromise on tax cuts and spending through the House and Senate by week’s end after Republicans and Democrats reached agreement on a legislative package extending dozens of tax breaks for businesses and families and financing 2016 government operations. A series of votes set for Thursday, culminating the process, would be Congress’ coda to a tumultuous 2015. Despite dissenters in both parties, passage was likely and President Barack Obama’s signature seemed assured for an accord bearing victories for everyone from oil companies and working-class families to 9/11 emergency workers and biomedical researchers. “ThisRead More

White House and congressional negotiators are trading final offers over U.S. oil exports and concessions for home-state interests as they move toward wrapping up a tax and spending deal that would cap Congress’ year. House Speaker Paul Ryan told GOP lawmakers he expected compromise legislation to be publicly released Tuesday — a measure that would deliver victories for to both sides. But the Wisconsin Republican provided few details. The remarks, which Ryan made in a conference call with fellow GOP legislators Monday, were conveyed by an official who described the private conversation on condition of anonymity. A major priority forRead More

The commando force that President Barack Obama is dispatching to Iraq to conduct clandestine raids against the Islamic State group does not fit neatly into a picture of the U.S. military strategy for defeating the extremist army. Even the name — “specialized expeditionary targeting force” — is a bit of a riddle. The main point is that the force is intended to ratchet up pressure on the Islamic State by using a small group of special operations troops — possibly fewer than 100 — to more aggressively use intelligence information, to include capturing and killing the group’s leaders. In theory,Read More

Donald Trump’s plan to ban Muslims from entering the United States is shoving the Republican Party to the edge of chaos, abruptly pitting GOP leaders against their own presidential front-runner and jeopardizing the party’s longtime drive to attract minorities. Unbowed, Trump fired a searing warning Tuesday via Twitter to fellow Republicans carping about his proposal. A majority of his supporters, he tweeted, “would vote for me if I departed the GOP & ran as an independent.” The crossfire between Trump and frustrated Republicans became a furious blur the day after the billionaire businessman announced his plan. Beleaguered 2016 rivals condemnedRead More

Republicans are pushing toward Senate approval of legislation demolishing President Barack Obama’s signature health care law and halting Planned Parenthood’s federal money, setting up a veto fight the GOP knows it will lose but thinks will delight conservative voters. The White House promised a veto Wednesday, saying the bill would “take away critical benefits and health care coverage” from families. With Republicans lacking the two-thirds House and Senate majorities needed for a successful override, the measure became a political messaging battlefield as both parties looked toward the 2016 presidential and congressional elections. “Obamacare is a direct attack on the middleRead More

A Republican congressional leader on Monday defended a House investigation of Planned Parenthood’s provision of fetal tissue to researchers, offering no suggestion that last week’s shooting deaths at one of the group’s clinics will cause the GOP to retreat from that probe. But House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., also indicated that the Republican-run Congress will not risk a government shutdown fight with President Barack Obama over GOP efforts to halt federal funding for the organization, which provides abortions and other health services to women. “I do not see a shutdown happening in this process,” he told reporters. Some conservativesRead More

Lawmakers are returning to Capitol Hill to wrap up work on the budget, highway funding and taxes, an end-of-the-year stretch that will test the standing of Republican leaders like House Speaker Paul Ryan with the GOP’s tea party wing and its anti-establishment presidential candidates. There are less than two weeks until a deadline to pass a $1.1 trillion catchall spending bill to fund Cabinet agencies and avoid a holiday season government shutdown. If the process doesn’t go smoothly, a last-minute temporary funding measure would be required to keep the government open when the current stopgap funding measure expires Dec. 11.Read More

Republicans embarrassed President Barack Obama by winning veto-proof House approval of legislation blocking Syrian and Iraqi refugees from the U.S., but from here the effort may take a different turn in Congress. Six days after the Paris attacks, the House voted 289-137 Thursday to essentially bar refugees from the two war-ravaged countries while tighter entry restrictions are imposed. In a rebuke to Obama that even an eleventh-hour visit to the Capitol by top administration officials could not avert, 47 Democrats — including many facing tight 2016 re-elections — joined the GOP, yielding the two-thirds margin needed to override vetoes. ThoughRead More

Asserting a public demand for a greater measure of protection, Republicans are ready to push legislation through the House erecting fresh hurdles for Syrian and Iraqi refugees trying to enter the United States. President Barack Obama promised a veto. While many Democrats mocked the House effort as election-season grandstanding, political pressures were pushing others to support the measure or seek to change other entry procedures. “We are a compassionate nation. We always have been, and we always will be,” said House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis. “But we also must remember that our first priority is to protect the American people.”Read More

Splintered House Republicans elected Rep. Paul Ryan to be the chamber’s 54th speaker on Thursday, turning to the youthful but battle-tested Wisconsin lawmaker to mend the party’s self-inflicted wounds and craft a conservative message to woo voters in next year’s elections. “The House is broken,” Ryan said in his first remarks to the chamber, seemingly referring as much to a GOP civil war between hard-liners and pragmatists as to the House’s usual partisan divisions. “We are not settling scores. We are wiping the slate clean.” In a slow-moving roll call that mixed politics with pageantry, 236 Republicans called out Ryan’sRead More